Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

Call for papers: British Education Studies Association Conference

Glasgow, June 26-27 June

Glasgow University cc Venana

We would like to invite you to submit an abstract as a contribution to this important conference. This year the conference takes place in the University of Glasgow, making it the first time the conference has been held in Scotland. The key theme of this year’s conference is: “The politics of education studies: pedagogy, curriculum, policy”

Some of the suggested topics for papers are the following:

• Alternative voices in Education Studies

• Innovations in Education Studies

• Education Studies: Contemporary debates

• Researching Education Studies: critical issues

• Student perspectives on Education Studies

Please note this list is not exhaustive.

SUBMISSION DETAILS:

Abstracts for the conference should be no longer than 400 words, and include:

RadioActive101promotes the engagement, informal learning and employability of disenfranchised young people through internet radio and social media. RadioActive101 is an approach to radio and social media that catalyses, organises and legitimises the digital practices, content production and critical and creative potential of disenfranchised young people – to provide a new and original community voice.

Please join us:

For a discussion of the impact of radio with disenfranchised young people

For a presentation of the evaluation of the advanced pilot

To learn how to get involved and roll out Internet Radio in your community

its that time of year when we turn our thoughts to the annual Christmas ed- techy fest that is Online Educa Berlin. For the last few years we have run live conference radio – The Sounds of the Bazaar from the conference. And a lot of fun it has been, too.

But this year we wanted to do something a bit different. We wanted to provide a workshop for those interested in internet radio. And we wanted to experiment with new formats. So here is the line up.

Wednesday 30 November – 1800 (near the bar)

Live Radio: Welcome to OnLine Educa

Our first day programme will capture delegates’ expectations of this year’s conference and highlights from the pre-conference workshops. We will be talking to the organizers about the behind-the-scenes activity, some of the exhibitors about why Educa is important to them and giving speakers the chance to advertise their sessions.

Thursday 1 December – 11.45 (room to be announced)

Live radio: Question Time

Educa’s very own live radio debate with a colourful panel of experts responding to your topical, polemic or simply whimsical questions about technology and learning with plenty of chance to fight back. Audience and speakers will be kept under control by our ruthless chairman Graham Attwell.

Thursday 1 December – 15.00 (room to be announced)

Workshop: Have fun with internet radio

What is it? How can it be used for teaching and learning? What equipment is needed and how much does it cost? Also your chance to create content, structure programmes, learn presenting, interviewing and studio skills and put them into practice in Friday’s live radio show!

Friday 2 December – time to be announced (near the bar)

Live Radio: Live on Friday

A full hours’ programme of news, views and gossip. There are interviews with speakers, a chance to catch up with key issues from sessions you missed, feedback from delegates and opportunities for you to contribute. For the first time at Educa, the programme will be produced by participants from Thursday’s Radio workshop.

Join us

Are you coming to Educa? if so there will be lots of chances to join in – as part of the audience in Question Time or through the workshop and live programme on Friday. or perhaps you have an idea or project you would like to talk about on the programmes.

And even if you can’t make one or more of the sessions, we are always happy to catch up over a pint in the bar! Just twitter, email or skype us.

This Thursday sees the final session in our autumn series of open on-line seminars run jointly between the Evolve network and Educamp.

The seminar, which takes place on the Elluminate platform, is on Mobile learning and Augmented Reality, with presentations from Mark Kramer and Same Easterby Smith, both of whom are leading developments in the use of this technology for learning.
Mark says: “The application of computer-generated imagery in live-video streams on mobile devices, as a way to expand the real-world, is finally available for the masses on an affordable basis. Augmented and mixed-reality scenarios are now a common fixture of our technology arsenal of methods to acquire information about our surroundings. This emergence of augmented reality (AR) also has great potential to support individual and group learning. I will share thoughts and experiences on how AR will change the way we view and experience learning in a situated context.”

For some time now I have been following the development of the Manchester Personal Learning Environment – now called the mPLE.

As Mark van Harmelen explains the “mPLE was first conceived of a response to a perceived lack of usable open source software to support communities and learning in those communities.

Informed by social constructivist and constructionist perspectives mPLE is designed to support individual and group learning activities. The intent is for mPLE to be used by self-directed and peer-assisting groups of learners (possibly teacher-led, but without any special status for teachers in the PLE). In order to support this vision of learning, mPLE combines a social software layer with advanced multi-user multi-media spaces where learners can meet and collaboratively perform learning activities in real time.

mPLE is close to the start of a release cycle, and will be released open source. mPLE is intended to be hosted either by an educational institution, a community group, or a less formal group of individuals. To facilitate easy hosting, one of the distribution media will be virtual machines for SUN’s free VirtualBox, making for a particularly easy install on Windows and Linux machines.”

This coming week is the annual Alt-C conference. And, as is becoming standard for conferences these days, many of the sessions will be freely available on line. Alt-C themselves are broadcasting the keynote sessions through Elluminate.

But it is not just the keynote sessions that can be followed online. Many other session organisers are planning some form of on-line participation.

Tuesday, 8 Steptember, 1340 – 1500 UK time sees a debate on the future of Virtual Learning Environments, entitled “The VLE is dead” with short (and lively!) contributions from James Clay, Steve Wheeler, Nick Sharratt and Graham Attwell. The event will be broadcast on Ustream. Deatils to follow.

For those of you living near Manchester but not enrolled for the conference, the wonderful fringe programme organised by F-Alt is open to all. Check out the programme on the F-Alt wiki (hash tag #falt09).

And of course, many other sessions can be followed on line. More details on the official conference Croudvine site or follow on Twitter on the #Altc2009 hash tag.

The Evolve network seminars are back. We have planned a series of open seminars for the autumn in conjunction with the upcoming Educamp Event (November 6-7, in Austria). As the blurb says:

“Once again, the online sessions will be supported by the JISC sponsored EVOLVE Community. Graham Attwell and Cristina Costa, two of the co-founders of EVOLVE, will co-moderate the online events. Together with Martin Ebner they will organise these events. Three sessions will be offered prior to the face to face event in Graz, Austria.

The themes under discussion and the guest speakers of each event are listed below.

The online round tables will be in English and are open for the ‘worldwide’ audience. Elluminate will be the online conference platform used. (A tutorial on how to join the session is available here). The recording of the sessions will be made available afterwards on this website.

Further information about each session and speakers will be published one week prior to event to take place. So check this place often, and also follow the Evolve network on Facebook.

We look forward to the interesting discussions. Stay tuned and help us spread the word about it (when mentioning it on twitter, blogposts, your social networks, etc please use the following tags: #ecg09 #educamp09 #EduCampGraz #ort09).”

As the F-Alt09 wiki says: “Spurred on by the fantastic success of F-ALT 08, we’re looking forward to an even more fabulous series of unconference events.”

F-ALT 09 will consist of a variety of sessions held in public, conference and university spaces. Delegates are encouraged to experiment with format, with slots focusing discussion and allowing participants and bystanders to experiment with an alternative conference format. Participants pick the topics they are most interested in debating and negotiate session delivery on the F-Alt wiki.

Much as I enjoy doing presentations at conferences it does seem oh some Web 1.0 ish. So i am working on how to make such events a little more interactive. Twitter is great – if conference organisers can make available a second screen at events. At least then people can ask questions during the presentation (I always tell people they are free to interrupt me but they seldom do). I have messed with buzz groups during the presentation but this always seems a little artificial.

I like the presentation Dave Cormier did at the WIAOC conference last weekend. I wasn’t at it, neither have I watched the video but his community crowd sourced slides both provide a wealth of shared learning and give the impression the event was a lot of fun. For explanation of the idea behind it see his blog.

I am going to try doing something like that next week at the ProLearn Summer School in Zilina.

I have just been writing a long overdue abstract for my keynote presentation at the DFG Research Training Group E-Learning conference on Interdisciplinary approaches to technology-enhanced learning (IATEL) in Darmstadt in June.

I was not quite sure what to talk about – the overall theme I was given is Learning in Networks – from learning in the Network to the learning Network and back.

So I am crowdsourcing the abstract to blog readers. What have I missed out? What other ideas should I include? All contributors will get a citation on the final slide!

Abstract

Graham Attwell will look at the evolution of learning networks.

The presentation will also look at the development of educations systems and the spread of mass education through an industrial model with curriculum based on expert knowledge. He will go on to examine key issues including control at the level of content, institutions and curriculum.

The presentation will look at the changing ways people are learning and developing and sharing knowledge using Web 2.0 and social software tools. Such practice is facilitating the development of personal learning pathways and integration within dispersed communities if practice.

The presentation will examine recent ideas and theory about learning in networks including the idea of rhizomatic curricula and connectivism.

As learning networks become more important, the issue of digital identities is attracting more attention. How do individuals interact in learning networks and whet is the role of tools such as Twitter? How important is the idea of place within learning networks?

The presentation will consider how learning takes place in Personal Learning Environments drawing on the work of Levi Stauss on bricolage and Goffman’s dramatulurgical perspective.

Finally the presentation will consider the implication of ideas of learning in networks and Pe

News Bites

Online Educa Berlin

Are you going to Online Educa Berlin 2014. As usual we will be there, with Sounds of the Bazaar, our internet radio station, broadcasting live from the Marlene bar on Thursday 4 and Friday 5 December. And as always, we are looking for people who would like to come on the programme. Tell us about your research or your project. tell us about cool new ideas and apps for learning. Or just come and blow off steam about something you feel strongly about. If you would like to pre-book a slot on the radio email graham10 [at] mac [dot] com telling us what you would like to talk about.

Consultation

Diana Laurillard, Chair of ALT, has invited contributions to a consultation on education technology to provide input to ETAG, the Education Technology Action Group, which was set up in England in February 2014 by three ministers: Michael Gove, Matthew Hancock and David Willetts.

The Social Tech Guide first launched last year, initially as a home to the 2013 Nominet Trust 100 – which they describe as a list of 100 inspiring digital projects tackling the world’s most pressing social issues.

In a press relase they say: “With so many social tech ventures out there supporting people and enforcing positive change on a daily basis, we wanted to create a comprehensive resource that allows us to celebrate and learn from the pioneers using digital technology to make a real difference to millions of lives.

The Social Tech Guide now hosts a collection of 100′s of social tech projects from around the world tackling everything from health issues in Africa to corruption in Asia. You can find out about projects that have emerged out of disaster to ones that use data to build active and cohesive communities. In fact, through the new search and filter functionality on the site, you should find it quick and easy to immerse yourself in an inspiring array of social tech innovations.”

Code Academy expands

The New York-based Codecademy has translated its learn-to-code platform into three new languages today and formalized partnerships in five countries.

So if you speak French, Spanish or Portuguese, you can now access the Codecademy site and study all of its resources in your native language.

Codecademy teamed up with Libraries Without Borders (Bibliotheques sans Frontieres) to tackle the French translation and is now working on pilot programs that should reduce unemployment and bring programming into schools. In addition, Codecademy will be weaving its platform into Ideas Box, a humanitarian project that helps people in refugee camps and disaster zones to learn new skills. Zach Sims, CEO of Codecademy, says grants from the public and private sector in France made this collaboration possible.

The Portuguese translation was handled in partnership with The Lemann Foundation, one of the largest education foundations in Brazil. As with France, Codecademy is planning several pilots to help Brazilian speakers learn new skills. Meanwhile in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the company has been working closely with the local government on a Spanish version of its popular site.

Codecademy is also linking up up with the Tiger Leap program in Estonia, with the aim of teaching every school student how to program.